Image: Kolovai Health Centre in Tonga, credit: DFAT

Data sharing collaboration makes Pacific health information more accessible than ever before

The Pacific Data Hub and Tupaia today announced a data sharing collaboration that will see publicly available health data on the Pacific made more accessible than ever before. 

The collaboration with Tupaia, a data aggregation, analysis and visualisation platform that works to map health systems in the Indo-Pacific region, will see data on Pacific health resources available on the Pacific Data Hub in an easily accessible format for the first time. 

“This collaboration with Tupaia takes the Pacific Data Hub to a new level, said Phil Bright, GIS, Innovation & Dissemination Lead at the Pacific Community (SPC).   

“Having one source of health data means anyone interested can build on this existing base of data. It will allow people to connect the dots quickly on disparate pieces of data to, for example, plan a vaccine rollout out across a country”, he said. 

The publicly available data shared includes the location of health facilities, the services they provide, opening hours, and staffing. 

Michael Nunan, from Beyond Essential, the creator of Tupaia, said the data sharing collaboration will create efficiencies for those seeking data on the Pacific for a range of purposes.  

“Making data accessible is at the core of what we do. Having reliable data such as the location of health facilities and the type of facilities is useful to disaster response, for incoming surgical teams, or for community group planning”, he said.  

The Pacific Community (SPC) established the Pacific Data Hub (PDH), as a single, authoritative point of entry for all Pacific data, information, and publications in 2019. The Pacific Data Hub is a digital gateway to information from Pacific countries, development partners, academia and research organisations and the private sector. 

“The Pacific Data Hub is a place to share data. It is easily searchable and this collaboration with Tupaia allows us to make the Hub even more rich and useful for people in the Pacific”, said Phil Bright. 

The Pacific health resources data shared in this collaboration joins the more than one million data observations available on the Pacific Data Hub indicator database called PDH.stat, allowing users to search, visualise and share data from across the region.

For more information on PDH.stat please contact Phil Bright at [email protected].

Story written by David Wardell, Corporate Communications Office